


A Matter of Appearances

by thefairyknight



Series: Raising Sarah [4]
Category: Terminator Genisys (2015)
Genre: Angst, Family, Gen, Kidfic, Masks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-16
Updated: 2015-07-16
Packaged: 2018-04-09 13:33:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4350692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefairyknight/pseuds/thefairyknight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Been working on your smile?” she asks.</p>
<p>Pops ‘smiles’.</p>
<p>“…So that’s a ‘no’, then, huh?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Matter of Appearances

 

Pops doesn’t get embarrassed by a lot of stuff.

When Sarah is ten she takes full advantage of this fact to give him a ‘make-over’ one weekend. She swipes a boxed dye kit and some lipstick and nail polish and eyeshadow, foundation and glitter and a packet of Crayola markers, and just goes nuts.

By the time she’d finished he looks like a rainbow clown, and she actually kind of feels _bad_ , like she’s making fun of him while he doesn’t even know it. Which isn’t actually something she wants to do, she decides. So after the fun’s over she helps him wash it all off, everything except the dye, which doesn’t look too silly just by itself. He’s bleached blond for a couple of weeks, until his hair grows back in.

Pops sheds. A lot. That’s not a problem most people would assume a machine would have.

“My flesh possesses hyper-accelerated regenerative properties,” he tells her. “Rapid hair replacement and growth is a side-effect.”

This is how Sarah finds out that if Pops leaves it alone for long enough, his hair will start to get long and shaggy. When she is eleven she convinces him to let it happen for a disguise. It’s not completely bullshit – Pops looks really different with his hair grown out – but it also, conveniently, gives her something to braid.

Unfortunately, after the first time, Pops deems it a safety issue and doesn’t do it again.

“It impedes peripheral vision,” he declares.

That’s where the line gets drawn, Sarah finds. Nothing that will cost them even a split second in a fight.

But at her request he lets her cut it off, and despite the fact that he can do it himself, he lets her keep on trimming it thereafter, too, and she figures out how to do a pretty good job, experimenting with a few different styles and looks. In return, she gets him to trim hers, too – the end results always exceptionally tidy and precise.

“Can you grow a beard? Or a moustache?” she wonders, looking up from a magazine full of men’s hairstyles. She’s got a sad little fan blowing over a bucket of ice to try and cool the room. It’s scorching outside the motel they’ve set up camp in, the heat rising in waves off of the pavement, the sun a yellow ball of hate currently lording over the world.

“Negative,” Pops says. “Facial hair follicles were not included in my design. They would require excessive grooming to maintain or remove.”

“Huh,” Sarah replies.

Imagining Pops with a perpetually-growing beard, like Rip Van Winkle, makes her snicker.

Pops will wear almost anything if she can come up with a reason for him to bother with a disguise. Clothes, hats, glasses. She puts him sunglasses a lot, partly because they suit him, and partly because sometimes his eyes gleam red when it’s dark and they can both agree that that’s a pretty major flaw in his disguise.

“How come your eyes do that?” she wonders, after watching him successfully navigate them through a totally dark backwoods road. His eyes had gleamed the whole while, dim little spots of red even through the sunglasses.

“My visual receptors are designed to detect heat signatures, identify material structures, target with pinpoint accuracy, and function in pitch black conditions,” he tells her. “These advantages outweigh the potential compromise to infiltration.”

“If you can target with pinpoint accuracy, why do you miss so often?” Sarah asks.

Pops looks down at her.

“Clarify,” he says.

“Well, like, last time you missed hitting… _him_ about twice before you managed it,” she points out.

“That was due to external interference.”

“Okay, but-”

“It had nothing to do with the integrity of my targeting abilities,” he insists. “External variables are inevitable.”

“…Okay, but-”

“They also impede the T-1000. In addition, its mimetic poly-alloy composition can lead to poor reaction times and inaccurate repair functions, due to delayed data transference between nanobots.”

“…Okay…”

“I suffer no such delays.”

“Okay, Pops, I get it! The sun was in your eyes!” Sarah declares.

“My targeting sensors are calibrated for maximum efficiency as well as accuracy in the majority of lighting conditions.”

“Right, yeah, absolutely, I’m sorry I brought it up!”

That’s how she learns that Pops will totally walk around in public with a temporary tattoo of a rainbow on the middle of his face, but he will _never_ _shut up_ if she starts questioning his ‘operational integrity’ or skills.

 

~

  
Sarah is around thirteen when she starts to give up the ‘happy sunshine flower girl’ act in public.

It’s not really that it stops working, per se, but it becomes strangely exhausting to try and keep up with it. When she was nine it was close enough to who she used to be – almost like a parody – that she could manage it.

But lately, it’s… just too far off the mark. When she tries to put the mask on it feels too flimsy. Like it’s such a bad lie, people might accidentally just see the truth instead.

“Maybe you should be the chipper one for a while, Pops,” she suggests, flipping through an old textbook she actually bought from a big bin outside a used book store. She takes a minute to stretch out her arms, and grins at him when he looks over.

“Been working on your smile?” she asks.

Pops ‘smiles’.

“…So that’s a ‘no’, then, huh?”

The ‘smile’ drops, and Pops goes back to what he was doing.

“Oh well,” she mutters to herself. “It was worth a shot.”

 

~

 

When Sarah is fourteen, Pops gets one of his arms run over by a truck.

The T-1000 is driving it.

It’s gruesome. Pops gets hit, not hard enough to really damage him much but enough to knock him over, and the T-1000 backs over him until one of the truck tires is planted on his arm, and then kills the engine.

Sarah, hidden in the warehouse across the street, swears and takes aim at him as he climbs out of the truck’s cab…

…And jolts to a halt. Like someone reached over and grabbed his arm.

It’s such a weirdly unexpected sight that Sarah actually hesitates for a second, trying to figure out what’s going on. Pops is trying to lift the truck off of himself and the T-1000 is hanging onto the open door, glowering down as if it’s personally offended him.

That’s when she notices his hand.

It’s _melded_ to the metal of the truck, the same steely blue trailing up his sleeve, like some kind of broken chameleon. He yanks at the limb, and for one second she just watches the T-1000, stuck on the door, and Pops, pinned by the truck. Both struggling like two turtles that have fallen onto their backs. It’s completely surreal.

Then the T-1000 rips the door of the truck clean off, and she remembers – right, implacable, terrifying foe. She takes aim again and opens fire, bullets _plonking_ satisfyingly into the T-1000’s torso. Pops finally manages to get out from under the truck and joins in, mangled arm dangling from his side as he lands a shot on the thing’s head.

It splits open like torn tinfoil, shrieking and furious, while Sarah reloads.

It’s the first and only encounter they ever have where the T-1000 is the one who ends up retreating.

 

~

 

Sarah’s not totally blind. She notices when Pops starts to have… trouble, sometimes.

Little things. His flesh doesn’t heal as fast it used to. Sometimes his wrists and joints fritz a bit. That one arm of his never really works as well as it did before the T-1000 parked on it. One time, when they’re switching vehicles, he stops walking halfway through the parking lot and his head jerks. And then jerks again, like a twitch.

“Pops?” she asks.

“One moment,” he says. Then he reaches up and _whacks_ the side of his head hard enough that Sarah winces, already imagining the ugly purple bruise he’s gonna have. There’s a _click_ and then a soft whirr, and Pops rotates his neck, apparently fine again.

“You okay?” she checks, unnerved.

“The error has been corrected,” he replies.

“What was it in the first place?”

“A small malfunction in my rotational gears.”

_“Malfunction?_ How come?” she wonders. It’s been months since they had any problems. Well, any problems that would involve violence. Well, violence towards _them_.

“At the time of my manufacture a minor misalignment was noted, but deemed within acceptable operating parameters. Without access to advanced maintenance facilities, however, the misalignment has increased,” Pops explains. “It has been manually rectified.”

“So it won’t happen again?” Sarah prods, raising a skeptical eyebrow at him.

“Theoretically.”

_“Pops.”_

“It is not an issue.”

“Okay, well then you won’t mind if I take a look,” she suggests.

“Misalignments can be easily rectified,” he insists. “There would be nothing of significance to note.”

“Humour me.”

It could just be her imagination, but she thinks Pops’ scowl looks a little deeper than usual as he complies, and lets her carefully poke and prod at his neck. It feels normal, although, yeah, that’s definitely going to bruise. She’d have to cut him open to see if there’s anything she could do to improve the mechanisms.

“Maybe you should take it easy for a while,” she suggests. “Work on some personal maintenance while I take care of the other stuff.”

“Unnecessary. My current activity levels are well within operational parameters,” he replies, stiff even by his standards.

“I’m just saying-”

“Unnecessary.”

Sarah sighs, and lets it go.

 

~

 

Three days after the death of Skynet and Pops’ impromptu ‘upgrade’, Sarah walks into their latest hiding spot – they’re still hiding while the cops search for the infamous ‘techno-terrorists’ who caused Genisys to go up in smoke – to see Kyle prodding at Pops.

“So you can look like anyone you’ve touched, then?” he asks.

Sarah dumps an armful of groceries onto the little desk next to the door.

“Affirmative,” Pops says.

“But I mean, have you tested it yet?” the soldier asks. They’re both situated around the table in the small kitchenette, putting together what look to be fake ID’s.

“The successful presentation of any form other than that of metal indicates that the mimetic poly-alloy is functioning appropriately,” Pops says.

“Oh no no no,” Kyle counters, shaking a finger at him. “Just because you can look like _yourself_ doesn’t mean you could look like _someone else_. You’re used to looking like that. How do you know if you can actually pull off someone different until you try? Like, say… me, or Sarah?” he suggests.

“That’s not necessary,” Sarah says, weirdly anxious at the prospect. “Pops doesn’t need to look like anybody but Pops.”

“Yeah but, the authorities are after us. And I don’t know if you’ve guys have noticed this, but there’s kind of a lot of them at this point in time,” Kyle counters.

“The authorities are _always_  after us, and there is usually a lot of them in non-post-apocalyptic societies.”

“I will alter my form if the situation requires it,” Pops interjects. “The situation does not require it.”

“Because field tests are always the best first tests,” Kyle says, sarcastically. “Come on. Seriously. This is a safety issue. If you actually can’t pull it off, we need to know.”

“If Pops says he can pull it off, he can pull it off,” she insists.

Pops puts down the ID he’s working on, and stares at Kyle for a second. Then he looks at her. Kyle glances her way, slightly perplexed, before turning back.

But Pops keeps looking at her as his body ripples, shifting and reforming, very quickly, and for a second Sarah’s pulse jumps and some deep, animal part of her brain tells her to get out, to run, to pick up a gun and fire. It’s Pops, she _knows_ it’s Pops, but the instinct still kicks in before she can tamp down on it.

Pops doesn’t even change shape. He just ripples, the once, and then resumes his usual form and turns back to the table and picks up the ID again. Goes back to the task at hand.

“So?” Kyle prods. “Were you trying? Did it not work?”

“This form is sufficient. It is unnecessary to take another,” Pops says.

Kyle lets out a breath, obviously disappointed, and turns towards her. Sarah schools her expression into one of total impassivity, angrily tells herself to get a grip, but her unease must be obvious because she can _see_ the moment when he puts two and two together and finally catches a clue.

His face falls.

“Right. Unnecessary,” he concludes. “Forget I even brought it up.”

Sarah turns and walks back out of the motel room.

She slams the door shut behind her.

 

~

 

It’s not fair.

It’s _not fair._

Pops has never done anything but and help her, and twice, now, she’s – she’s what? Turned on him? Been afraid of him? Forgotten who he is, even just for one tiny second?

It’s not fair. It doesn’t matter what he’s made out of, it’s never matter whether it was bone or metal or mimetic poly-alloy, as long as he’s still Pops, she shouldn’t care. Right? She thought she’d lost him. Who cares how she got him back.

Right?

God, she wants to shoot something.

She drives instead.

Not even fast and definitely not going anywhere in particular, just steady, radio on, following the ebb and flow of traffic. New music is weird. Probably because it’s thirty-three years into the future, and she’s never heard it before, and even the ‘classics’ station is playing stuff that’s totally unfamiliar.

It’s weird, driving alone. Not bad. Just weird.

She wishes she could have that same low level of dissonance with Pops’ upgrade. Most of the time she can. Most of the time she just forgets it. But nearly everything the T-1000 ever did was to try and kill her, and some part of her can't help but associate the way he operated with pure threat and menace. The way he moved, the way he changed, it's all a big flashing 'DANGER!' sign to her brain.

And then, unbidden, the memory of the T-1000 getting stuck on the car door drifts up in her mind.

Shit. She wonders if she’s going to have to help pry Pops off of surfaces at some point later on in life. The thought of the look on his face makes her snort.

She relaxes her grip on the steering wheel a little. Takes a deep breath.

When she stops feeling like she needs to shoot something, she turns and heads back for the motel.

 

~

 

The first time they get pulled over in 2017, Sarah glances at Kyle in the rearview mirror, and then reaches over and taps Pops on the shoulder.

“Do it,” she says.

“You are certain?” he asks.

“Yup,” she confirms.

Pops ripples. It sets her nerves jangling, Sarah can’t help it, but she averts her gaze for most of it and just focuses on herself, her reactions. Kyle's been growing out a beard, and she's put waves in her hair, disguised her features with loud make-up and expensive sunglasses.

When the cop comes over to the window of their car, Pops has the appearance of a young woman who bumped into him on the sidewalk a few weeks ago. Mutli-coloured braids, wide brown eyes, earrings shaped like stars, barrettes shaped like butterflies, pretty yellow sundress. He smiles at the cop.

“Good morning, officer! What’s the trouble?” he asks, all sunny summer innocence.

The cop asks to see his license, and he pulls out a fake they’d put together for just such occasions.

Sarah can see the cop thinking to himself that he _just saw_ a burly middle-aged guy in sunglasses driving the car, but she just looks at him while Kyle does his best ‘nicest-guy-in-the-world’ face from the backseat.

He shows them a picture of Pops, the way Pops normally looks, and asks if they recognize him.

“Wow, he looks really scary,” Pops chimes in.

“He sorta looks like my father-in-law,” Kyle can’t help but volunteer.

“He does _not,_ ” Pops says, scrunching his button nose.

“Yeah, he’s got that whole ‘perpetual scowl’ thing going for him.”

“Oh please, your father-in-law is not that scary looking. You just say he is because he totally kicked your ass that one time.”

“He did not totally kick my ass!”

“He totally kicked your ass. You needed to be rescued and everything. It was pathetic.”

The cop clears his throat.

“So, this is not actually your father-in-law, then?” he clarifies.

“Nah, I was just kidding around,” Kyle says. “Good luck, though. Hope you catch the guy.”

With a nod, the cop offers them some cursory reminders about speed limits and seatbelts, and then lets them go.

As soon as he’s out of sight, Sarah loses her shit.

She puts her face in her hands and leans forward, shaking.

“Sarah?” Kyle asks, alarmed, but when she comes up she’s laughing so hard she can barely breathe. Pops glances at her, still doll-faced and innocent, a grown-up version of the mask she used to wear when she was younger.

“Holy _shit_ ,” she gasps. “That was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Out of the corner of her she sees Pops ripple, and she’s too busy laughing to be alarmed, it’s over so quickly, she’s still sucking in air when he turns back into the outline she’s familiar with.

“The subterfuge was successful,” he declares.

Kyle starts grinning, just a little uncertainly, not totally in on the joke.

“Seriously, though,” he says. “How are you so – you, when you look like this, and then you can turn around and do _that?”_

“The ability to mimic behaviours should not be mistaken for genuine comprehension of them,” Pops tells him. “A parrot can imitate the sound of human speech. That does not make it fluent in English.”

“Huh. Never thought of it that way.”

Sarah brushes some of the tears out of the corner of her eyes.

“Good job, Pops,” she finally says, reaching over to clap him on the shoulder.

“You as well,” Pops says.

She looks at him and smiles.


End file.
